2017 Investor Roundtable:General Discussion

[neroden]

That wasn't the case with the Model X release. We weren't told anything about the production delays but rather learned about it in hindsight during CCs. That was a frustrating time for investors. I'm guessing at this point, if Tesla is way behind for the FSD event in December, as the evidence from AP2 performance suggests, they would not reveal that. The event would still take place to some extent, possibly highly coordinated with software to achieve the appearance of FSD technology, but there would be no imminent release of FSD software, or even level 3 software. Hope I'm totally wrong on this.

I think you're totally right. Tesla is nowhere near "complete level 3", let alone full self driving.

 

[larmor]

It's pretty simple. He's excited about the possible future of travel - in this case from busy city center to busy city center without the angst that usually goes along with doing that. I've never understood some people's need to sugar all over other people's passions and dreams (even under the guise of 'keeping it real'). We all know it's going to be difficult and time consuming to accomplish, but anything worthwhile always is; you know, like starting an EV car company in Silicon Valley, or a private rocket ship company, or developing attractive solar shingles, or building an underground high speed transport system.

Unfortunately regulations have a nasty way of slowing everything thing down, but alot of silicon valley business models skirt or ignore regulations, then address it after it has been build-think uber, airbnb, whatsapp--designed for calling, etc. Tesla shifts the paradigm in the real world and requires real cooperation. Probably that is why the market can't see the vision of tesla, and needs to see first hand production.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Interestingly, yesterday's tweet about the NY/DC hyperloop was a major shift in Musk's tone from the flippant tweets of the past. Instead, it was classic Musk evangelical earnestness and hyper optimism that we are so used to seeing from him for all things Tesla related.

Which now makes me wonder, was the flippancy of Musk's past tweets, including the ironic name Boring Company, really reflective of Musk's semi-serious intentions, or a very calculated way for Musk to gradually disclose his very serious intentions?

What if Musk has been working seriously on this project for awhile and has worked out enough of the engineering and financial hurdles to make this a very serious endeavor. But before he's ready to seriously announce it, he needs to dig some tunnels and have some preliminary discusssions with govt officials, and he knows he can't possibly do that in complete stealth. But he also knows that if he discloses such ambitious intentions seriously at such an early stage, he risks the kind of ridicule he had to endure in the early days of Tesla, multiplied many times over.

So he plays it very lighthearted, ambiguous,and it all seems off the cuff and the distracted plaything of a visionary. Until he has enough pieces in place to shift to serious evangelizing.

Perhaps all his initial cheekiness has been very calculatingly clever introductory PR?

I would personally prefer an Elon that is a little like the rest of us, that once a while gets too excited, and says "Watch this!" at the spur of the moment. Maybe the Borning Company was one of those moments.

 

[neroden]

Amtrak could become more efficient too, but if the Hyperloop works that will demolish any other choice if the price were comparable. Could it actually happen?

No. Bluntly, it couldn't.

Those of us who know a little bit about the economics of tunnels and railroads can tell you that, unless every ticket is subsidized by more than Amtrak is, the ticket price cannot be comparable to Amtrak unless they substantially redesign it so that the Hyperloop trains carry more people, and that's assuming someone else pays for the capital construction.

If they have to recover the capital costs of the tunnel (as opposed to simply having those paid for by government or something) then it's completely impossible to have comparable price to running on the surface route built 100 years ago.

Nothing wrong with tunnels, but they don't seem to understand the basics of transportation economics. The most important point when it comes to cost-effectiveness is to put a hell of a lot of people in each vehicle. When I see a revised hyperloop design which holds 1200 people per train, then I'll know they're starting to get serious.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Ah, yes, but the WSJ says that this proves "American car buyers are showing little interest in vehicles that rely solely on battery". Like lack of sales of Yugos proves that Americans don't drive cars.

Nah, Yugo only proves the lack of American interest in European cars, obviously.

As an EV fan I'm a little disappointed by the Bolt's sale. I wish GM had done a little more in getting the price down, if a Bolt an sell for $30K instead of $37K before incentives, I think it can be a very compelling car, and can give Tesla a run for their money. As a TSLA investor though,

 

[DurandalAI]

You know, I've been saying I want cars which will say "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that", when the drivers attempt to tailgate, rear-end cars, run over pedestrians, accelerate into walls, etc.... I don't really care about full-self-driving, I'd like cars which will refuse to kill people. Seems like an easier task.

I have a mild fear of cars that refuse to run over pedestrians, only due to if there is absolutely no risk to pedestrians, then they'll start playing in the streets or carjack. It all depends on where you are in the world, but in some locations, it's a concern. Even where I am, in certain parts of town, I wouldn't dare drive if I couldn't plow through cars/people if an emergency situation erupted. Yes, outlier situations here, but go look up some videos of people in cars trying to escape rioters, like in the LA riots.

 

[Waiting4M3]

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Been trying to get someone at Tesla to train autopilot to run the Tail of the Dragon well...

Maybe Nico would do it?

He would be a decent AI reference behavior. Polite, obedient, does not want to spend his entire life driving in circles.

Yes, just like EV HW needs a Ludicrous mode, the AP SW needs an F1 mode.

 

[MitchJi]

I'm sure the Model S and X owners with AP2 would have appreciated a little more transparency about this process from Tesla. They were given the expectation of AP2 at parity with AP1 around February, and then rapidly progressing from there in the direction of FSD. Instead, AP2 is evidently still having a difficult time even staying in the lane on curves. I hope you guys are right about Tesla being wayyyy ahead of such performance with a parallel development of FSD technology that they do not want to share with current AP2 owners.

I believe that the first part of their timeline, getting to parity has been slower than expected due to the unexpected difficulties that they encountered adapting to the use of multiple non mobile eye cameras.

They believed that once they completed that that their progress would be relatively quick. The fact that they were incorrect on one portion of their estimate doesn't mean that they've incorrect on the second point. The fact that Elon reiterated the test drive validates that.

I think the present AP2 codebase is simply meant to catch up to AP1. I suspect the FSD codebase is different beast altogether based on all cameras, u/s, and radar. I am hoping the 3's arrival will let them progress on FSD much faster as the total number of AP2 equipped cars leaps upwards.

I don't think so!

 

[Waiting4M3]

Even if Tesla pulls off the FSD from LA to NY, I'm sure there are moon-landing-conspiracists that can lend their expertise to discredit Tesla

 

[MitchJi]

The event would still take place to some extent, possibly highly coordinated with software to achieve the appearance of FSD technology, but there would be no imminent release of FSD software, or even level 3 software. Hope I'm totally wrong on this.

FSD software will be identical to enhanced AP. The only issue will be the regulatory approval necessary to use it for fully autonomous driving.

In other words as AP becomes better it will become fully autonomous.

 

[goinfraftw]

I wonder how much the Boring Company is about Mars and mining as it is about transportation on Earth.

 

[neroden]

Faster than motorcycles, yup it's true.

Sport bike has a run-in with two Ludicrous Tesla Model S (P100D, P90DL)

Pffft... that was a mouldy old gasoline motorcycle. Run it against a Zero.

 

[neroden]

Comparing NY-DC hyperloop to Trumps US-Mexican border wall is beyond retarded

It's hyperbole, but they *are* both very poorly-thought-out ideas. So you can expect money spent on them AT THIS TIME, before they're fully baked ideas, to be wasted.

 

[neroden]

An interesting update

Chevrolet Bolt Production To Double After Extended Factory Shutdown?

Good news. That's not a doubling, though. At the same rate, six cars down the line == 4 sonics 2 bolts today, and 3 sonics 3 bolts tomorrow. So it's a 50% increase.

I have read that the factory is limited to 90,000 cars per year. This means their original production limitation was 30,000 cars per year, and they are increasing it to 45,000 cars per year.

This confirms the belief of many of us that GM underestimated Bolt demand (while overestimating Sonic demand). They are retooling to try to keep up. This may also explain why they haven't fixed their totally broken distribution system for the Bolt. If they are making revisions to the Bolt at the same time as they increase production capacity, they may just be waiting to finish that before distributing the Bolt to most places. This would be similar to what happened to Powerwall 1.

Still, this is such ultra-cautious behavior: 45,000, really?

 

[Waiting4M3]

Good news. That's not a doubling, though. At the same rate, six cars down the line == 4 sonics 2 bolts today, and 3 sonics 3 bolts tomorrow. So it's a 50% increase.

I have read that the factory is limited to 90,000 cars per year. This means their original production limitation was 30,000 cars per year, and they are increasing it to 45,000 cars per year.

This confirms the belief of many of us that GM underestimated Bolt demand (while overestimating Sonic demand). They are retooling to try to keep up. This may also explain why they haven't fixed their totally broken distribution system for the Bolt. If they are making revisions to the Bolt at the same time as they increase production capacity, they may just be waiting to finish that before distributing the Bolt to most places. This would be similar to what happened to Powerwall 1.

Still, this is such ultra-cautious behavior: 45,000, really?

Next up for GM, convince and train their dealers to sell the 45K Bolts, it's gotta be easier than Tesla building more stores and service centers, right?

 

[neroden]

It's pretty simple. He's excited about the possible future of travel - in this case from busy city center to busy city center without the angst that usually goes along with doing that. I've never understood some people's need to sugar all over other people's passions and dreams (even under the guise of 'keeping it real').

I disapprove of wasting money on stupid *sugar* in a way which prevents people from spending money on things which would actually help.

While I'm sure it will morph over time -- since Elon is very good at changing course fast -- right now, Hyperloop consists of a bunch of proposals which are *less* efficient and *more* expensive than conventional high-speed rail and therefore stupid. And they aren't just worse due to lack of economies of scale, they are *inherently* worse.

This *vaporware* is basically being used as an excuse to not fund high speed rail.

Meanwhile, while Musk is correct that we can't seem to build rail at reasonable prices in the US, he hasn't bothered to figure out why. A large part of it is a construction mafia, basically. Another part is extremely expensive *surface construction* (for tunnel access points, etc.) -- the tunnel drilling is by far the most efficient part of the process. He's haring off in the wrong direction, and I hate to see this waste of effort.

Automated electric bulldozers would be a much more effective and useful dream.

 

[D-egg-O]

I wonder how much the Boring Company is about Mars and mining as it is about transportation on Earth.

Or just plain survival on Mars.

 

[Off Shore]

It's obvious the verbal approval for the underground hyperloop is from the president. No one else is in the position to give this kind of verbal approval.

Not that he'll be in that position much longer.

 

[jbcarioca]

No. Bluntly, it couldn't.

Those of us who know a little bit about the economics of tunnels and railroads can tell you that, unless every ticket is subsidized by more than Amtrak is, the ticket price cannot be comparable to Amtrak unless they substantially redesign it so that the Hyperloop trains carry more people, and that's assuming someone else pays for the capital construction.

If they have to recover the capital costs of the tunnel (as opposed to simply having those paid for by government or something) then it's completely impossible to have comparable price to running on the surface route built 100 years ago.

Nothing wrong with tunnels, but they don't seem to understand the basics of transportation economics. The most important point when it comes to cost-effectiveness is to put a hell of a lot of people in each vehicle. When I see a revised hyperloop design which holds 1200 people per train, then I'll know they're starting to get serious.

With all due respect you were missing the point. Nothing I said suggested that Amtrak could be profitable, although profitable long distance trains do exist in the world. In point of fact, the "right-of-way" for all transportation modes: air, sea, road, rail is subsidized in some manner in almost every country. The questions are normally not whether they are subsidized but How Much? and By Whom? You imply that established rail right-of-way is cheaper than something new. Actually the decrepit infrastructure of the US rail system is one reason it is so inefficient. The tariff structures are another. I did not say hyper loop actually will work, or if it would be most efficient underground if it did work. The most efficient solutions do change with time.

In general I try to avoid absolute statements. The only absolutes of which I know are the universal truth that absolute statements are always wrong. Things change.

 

[hobbes]

I have a mild fear of cars that refuse to run over pedestrians, only due to if there is absolutely no risk to pedestrians, then they'll start playing in the streets or carjack. It all depends on where you are in the world, but in some locations, it's a concern. Even where I am, in certain parts of town, I wouldn't dare drive if I couldn't plow through cars/people if an emergency situation erupted. Yes, outlier situations here, but go look up some videos of people in cars trying to escape rioters, like in the LA riots.

Wow. Why don´t you think about people in cars running over pedestrians on the other hand, like in the Berlin terror attack? Or people driving drunk? Think that way more people would be saved if cars would refuse to run over pedestrians than drivers would be saved from rioting pedestrians. Unless you think the good people always sit inside the car?